Source: Chris Nicoll/USA Today Sports
Blog Update
A little bit of a change in plans this weekend. Last week I posted odds for the first week of College Bowl Games through today, December 21st and had originally planned on posting the Week 2 predictions on Saturday the 22nd. However, I wanted to limit myself to just one post per day since I plan on doing two separate posts on Fantasy Football and Odds on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend.
I still feel sometimes that I’m spamming my LinkedIn profile with these posts since I don’t really see anybody else posting sports-themed analytics on a consistent basis like myself. Could be a function of not having anybody else in my connections that does it for a living, but since LinkedIn is currently my primary “customer” at this point (i.e. I’m actively looking for employment and because I have connections there that, for their own reasons, don’t have Facebook or Twitter accounts) I’ll still post links to this blog there.
Of course, we are quickly coming to the end of the college football season, and we’re less than two months away from the NFL season so posts on both subjects will be ending with them. I do have a passion for college basketball, and I have some ideas, but, as with anything else data-related, it’s all about getting data, analyzing the data, and cleaning it up for whatever it is I plan on doing with it. I still have my code from the NCAA Tournament Challenge from earlier this year, but that’s based on “clean” data provided by Kaggle. Getting my own data will mean creating a pipeline for cleaning it on my own.
Week 1 Bowl Game Recap
From December 15th through last night, we’ve had eight FBS Bowl games and one FCS Bowl game (the Celebration Bowl with the North Carolina A&T Aggies and Alcorn State Braves). In those eight games, my model has correctly predicted seven of those outcomes based on majority percentage odds. The one game I got “wrong”, though, I would argue was a bit of a toss-up anyway based on my predictions. That game was the Cure Bowl between the Tulane Green Wave and Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns. I had Tulane with a 49.68% chance of winning and Louisiana with a 50.11% chance. That’s effectively 50-50. The Camellia Bowl between the Georgia Southern Eagles and Eastern Michigan Eagles were also pretty much a toss-up, but since I had Georgia Southern with a 50.4% chance of winning, I called that one as a win for my model.
Remember that the Brier Score is my metric for scoring my predictions, and so far I have achieved a 0.098 score (closer to zero being the goal). That’s pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.
Week 2 Bowl Game Odds (12/21-12/28)
| Bowl | Teams | Model Odds | Vegas Moneyline Odds | Difference | Predicted Total Points | Vegas Over/Under |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bahamas Bowl | Florida International Golden Panthers | 27.80% | 29.76% | -1.96% | 57 | |
| 21-Dec | Toledo Rockets | 72.20% | 73.15% | -0.95% | 77 | |
| Idaho Potato Bowl | Western Michigan Broncos | 7.10% | 20.45% | -13.35% | 51.5 | |
| 21-Dec | BYU Cougars | 92.90% | 82.51% | 10.39% | 55 | |
| Birmingham Bowl | Memphis Tigers | 50.51% | 61.84% | -11.33% | 73 | |
| 22-Dec | Wake Forest Demon Deacons | 49.49% | 40.98% | 8.51% | 80 | |
| Hawaii Bowl | Hawaii Rainbow Warriors | 63.62% | 61 | |||
| 22-Dec | Lousiana Tech Bulldogs | 36.38% | 62 | |||
| Armed Forces Bowl | Houston Cougars | 6.08% | 35.71% | -29.63% | 60 | |
| 22-Dec | Army Black Knights | 92.92% | 67.25% | 25.67% | 60 | |
| Dollar General Bowl | Buffalo Bulls | 50.08% | 49.5 | |||
| 22-Dec | Troy Trojans | 49.92% | 52 | |||
| Quick Lane Bowl | Minnesota Golden Gophers | 37.08% | 34.61% | 2.47% | 58 | |
| 26-Dec | Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets | 62.92% | 68.26% | -5.34% | 61 | |
| Cheez-It Bowl | California Golden Bears | 37.34% | 38.5 | |||
| 26-Dec | TCU Horned Frogs | 62.66% | 32 | |||
| First Responder Bowl | Boston College Eagles | 15.40% | 55.5 | |||
| 26-Dec | Boise State Broncos | 84.60% | 55 | |||
| Independence Bowl | Temple Owls | 73.44% | 66.14% | 7.30% | 54.5 | |
| 27-Dec | Duke Blue Devils | 26.56% | 36.78% | -10.22% | 58 | |
| Pinstripe Bowl | Miami Hurricanes | 52.92% | 60.35% | -7.43% | 47.5 | |
| 27-Dec | Wisconsin Badgers | 47.08% | 42.74% | 4.34% | 44 | |
| Texas Bowl | Baylor Bears | 3.41% | 38.02% | -34.61% | 55.5 | |
| 27-Dec | Vanderbilt Commodores | 96.59% | 64.94% | 31.65% | 53 | |
| Camping World Bowl | West Virginia Mountaineers | 89.71% | 67 | |||
| 28-Dec | Syracuse Orange | 10.29% | 78 | |||
| Alamo Bowl | Iowa State Cyclones | 34.46% | 41.32% | -6.86% | 53.5 | |
| 28-Dec | Washington State Cougars | 65.54% | 61.69% | 3.85% | 52 | |
| Music City Bowl | Purdue Boildermakers | 24.00% | 39.68% | -15.68% | 55.5 | |
| 28-Dec | Auburn Tigers | 76.00% | 63.25% | 12.75% | 49 |
I do have a couple of toss-up (roughly 50-50 split) games in this mix including the Birmingham Bowl and the Dollar General Bowl. It will be interesting to see how those games turn out.
Week 3 of the College Bowl season should be fun since that’s the last one besides the final Championship Game on January 7th. Week 3 does feature the Semifinal games at the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl on December 29th as well as all the big New Year’s Bowls like the Rose Bowl, the Citrus Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and the Fiesta Bowl! And, of course, my beloved Texas A&M Aggies playing on New Year’s Eve in the TaxSlayer Bowl!!
Enjoy the holidays, and I’ll see you with my next update on Saturday, December 29th.
Reminder that Vegas Moneyline odds come from Pinnacle. The odds presented in the table were gathered the morning of 12/21 and may definitely change for games played much later than that as these things do. All predictions presented from my model are for entertainment purposes only.